While it’s still unclear how many copies the game has actually sold to date, Activision has announced that, based on digital and retail sell-through numbers, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the biggest entertainment launch of 2014.
In an official statement, the company’s CEO Bobby Kotick reflected on this milestone, all the while revealing that the cumulative revenue for the franchise — which has been defining the parameters of the console shooter since 2003 — has now exceeded $10 billion.
Since Activision created the Call of Duty franchise in 2003, franchise revenues have exceeded $10 billion in sales worldwide, far exceeding box office receipts for such household movie franchises as Hunger Games, Transformers, Iron Man and Avengers, combined. Advanced Warfare is the biggest entertainment launch of 2014 in terms of revenue, surpassing all movie, music and book launches this year.
We poured our hearts into making Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare an epic ride, and we are pleased with the performance. Sales and engagement are up through the first week compared to last year.
Those engagement analytics that Kotick alludes to are based on statistics that Sledgehammer accrued over Advanced Warfare‘s first week on the market, a window of time that witnessed over 370 million online matches, according to Activision.
Much was said about the middling performance of last year’s Call of Duty: Ghosts — both financially and critically — so it seems that the publisher has got off to a good start with 2014’s Call of Duty. How the franchise will fight to stay relevant over the coming years is another matter entirely, and one that will be made all the more interesting now that the IP has switched to a three-studio development cycle.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is available now across consoles and PC. All things considered, our own verdict of the title echoed Kotick’s statement, as we found it to be the most refreshing and exhilarating CoD in years.
